


Recovery Time

by Gamebird



Series: Gamebird's TOG Series [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Compliant, Copley has a couple cameos, Gen, Missing Scene, world-building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27370441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gamebird/pseuds/Gamebird
Summary: Missing scene from leaving Merrick Tower to getting together at the pub. The group cleans up, eats, rests, and heals a little. Along the way, Nile gets more answers about the limits of their ability and more information comes to light about the details of Booker's betrayal. Nile's POV.
Series: Gamebird's TOG Series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138370
Comments: 39
Kudos: 103





	Recovery Time

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to dontbesoevil for translation of the two lines in French! (Also, isn't that the BEST nick?) After their help, the lines actually say what I intended them to say.

The interior of the car was silent, aside from the noise of the engine and what faint sounds filtered in from outside. Next to Nile was Booker and beyond him, Nicky. In the passenger seat ahead of them, Joe was looking to Andy. "Are you okay to drive?"

Nile saw enough of the look she gave to characterize it as 'withering'. Joe said no more.

Andy said, "We need someplace to rest and clean up."

"Give me my phone," Nile said.

Andy's eyes flicked to hers in the rearview mirror. "Why?"

"So I can call Copley. He said he wanted to help."

Andy didn't question further. She handed it back. Miraculously, the phone was intact (also, how did Andy even still have it after all they'd gone through? Nile filed that away as a question for another time). It was weird to see it with still 18% power. It felt like weeks had passed since she'd been able to plug it in to a charger. But it had been only days and not very many of them. "Do you know his number?"

"No," Andy said.

"Oh."

Booker provided it in sotto voce. Nile put it in. Copley answered on the first ring. "Did you get clear?"

"Yeah," Nile told him. "We're clear. We need a hotel room or somewhere we can shower and change clothes."

"You can go to my place."

"No," Andy said from the front, obviously able to hear him. "Somewhere disposable."

Nicky shifted to look behind them warily. He pulled his pistols and handed one off to Booker, who had turned as well. Nicky said, "I'll take the left."

Booker nodded and responded, "Right."

Nile said into the phone, "Hotel. Not your place. Maybe we'll swing by later."

"Okay. Where are you?"

Nile leaned to the side, looking around through the glass of the car window. "Uh … London?"

"That's not helpful," Copley said.

"I've never been here before," Nile said.

From the front seat, Joe provided a cross-street and a district, which Nile relayed on to Copley. A few moments later, they had a rendezvous set up in the parking garage of a local hotel. When they reached it, they circled the building. Nicky said, "No tails." They went inside.

Nile handed the phone back to Andy when they got out of the car. Andy looked at it blankly like she didn't know why it had been given back, then stuffed it in a pocket before Nile could say anything. Copley pulled in. He looked them over, eyes wide at the blood and bullet holes. "You stay here," he said. "I'll get the rooms."

"Room," Andy said. "Just one. At the end of a hall, near an exit." He nodded and started to turn away again.

"Two beds," Booker said.

Copley nodded again and started to move. Nile did some quick math, made some assumptions, and said, "And a pull-out."

He stopped. Waited. "Anything else?" He managed this without seeming put-upon or irritated.

"Extra towels," Joe said.

"Okay," Copley said. "One room near an exit. A pull-out. Two beds. Extra towels."

"Do they have smoking room?" Nicky asked.

"You don't have cigarettes," Booker said.

" _You_ have cigarettes," Nicky said.

"We don't want his cigarettes," Joe said.

Andy told Copley, "That's everything."

Copley nodded and walked off.

"He owes us cigarettes," Nicky said of Booker.

Joe said, "He owes us more than cigarettes."

Booker leaned against the car. He found his cigarettes and grimaced at the blood on the package. Andy snatched them out of his hand. "No," she snapped at him. "None of that." It was a command, delivered in an icy voice. He swallowed and studied the ceiling of the parking garage. Andy walked over and tossed the cigarettes in the trash.

Nile asked her hesitantly, "What's going on?"

"Nicky always bums cigarettes off him," Andy said. "Either Nicky pisses off Joe by borrowing one, or Joe pisses off Nicky by preventing it, and in either case Booker gloats at them both by smoking. So no cigarettes."

"I wouldn't have gloated," Booker said.

"Shut up," Andy told him. Booker shut up. The other two stayed silent, too, so Nile did as well. Andy leaned against the car, holding her side where she'd been shot. She looked miserable and very pale. A long, awkward silence passed.

After a while, Copley emerged and presented them with room cards. "Third floor. There was no pull-out, but they'll send up a cot in a few hours. Room has the normal number of towels, but they'll send more with the cot. They don't have smoking rooms at all. Please don't smoke in the room. The smoke detector will go off."

"There will be no smoking," Andy said with finality.

"Okay. Good." Copley waited a beat to see if there was an explanation for her tone. There was not, so he led them up the stairs to the room.

"Are there cameras everywhere these days?" Andy complained, shielding her face from the one in the stairwell. The others kept their heads down as well, so Nile copied them. Nicky had brought the assault rifle with him from where Booker had stowed it in the trunk earlier. He kept it as much under his shirt as possible.

"Afraid so," Copley said. "Good news is that they'll tape over the footage every week or two. As long as there's not a crime scene left in the room, there's no reason why they'll keep a recording. This is on one of my accounts, so please don't leave a crime scene. Oh, speaking of which, they have a limit of four adults per room. So that's what you are: four adults, one child."

Andy, Booker, Joe, and Nicky all looked at Nile. Nile said, "What?"

Copley ran the card through the slot and opened the door to the hotel room. Andy forced a smile. "Well, you _are_ the baby." She walked in first.

"Great." Nile rolled her eyes. "Sure. I can play seventeen or whatever." She followed.

Copley said, "I think the limit is twelve."

Nile snorted and turned around next to the bed. "There is no way I will pass as twelve."

Copley shrugged. "It's another reason not to leave a mess." Booker collapsed into the one chair in the room. Andy had already gone into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. Joe and Nicky paused just past Nile with Nicky tossing the gun on one of the beds. Copley came in and shut the door. After a brief look around and a few quiet words Nile missed, Nicky pressed Joe into the wall and began to kiss him passionately. Nile turned her back on that, facing Copley, who blinked a couple times and locked eyes with her. "Do you need anything else?"

"Clothes," she said.

He nodded. "Sizes?"

She swiped the pad of paper and pen from next to the phone and wrote out what she needed. "Shoes, underclothes, accessories, everything."

Booker provided his sizes when asked. He added, "You said we could name our price. This is part of it. You pay. And include some local currency."

"No problem," Copley said.

Nile looked at Joe and Nicky, who were still thoroughly involved in tonsil hockey. She handed the list to Copley. "Just guess for them. And use my sizes for Andy."

Joe and Nicky stopped long enough for Nicky to say, "Toothbrush."

Joe said, "And mouthwash. You taste like blood." They embraced without kissing, with Joe putting a tender hand over the back of Nicky's head. "Maybe shampoo. This has dried crusty."

Nile looked to Copley. "Add that. Toiletries for everyone. Whatever would go in a traveler's kit." He nodded and took the pen from her to make a note.

Booker sat forward. "Also, a scalpel. A utility knife or some other small blade will do, but I prefer a surgical steel. Long-handled forceps, at least four to six inches long."

"What's that for?" Nile asked.

"Bullets are not always ejected from the body," Booker explained. "You may heal around them at which point the only way to get them out is to cut them out. Otherwise they itch." He shook his head knowingly. "You do not want them left in you for four years."

"Four years?"

"It is very irritating. Same for anything else broken off within you, like an arrowhead or a piece of that car you fell on. We will need to inspect one another." He turned back to Copley. "We will also need gauze, bandages for Andromache, and antiseptic. She has probably torn her stitches. If you find sutures, bring them, although I do not know if she will allow us to tend her."

"She'll need antibiotics," Copley said. "Do you guys need antibiotics?"

"I …" Booker hesitated, "No, but what Andromache needs is something I don't know. Bring whatever you would use to treat a mortal woman of her condition."

"Usually they'd go to hospital," Copley said, "but that's not happening. Gunshot wounds are automatically reported anyway. I'll get what I can. She should rest." He made a note on the list.

"We should all rest," Booker said.

Copley nodded, then left.

"And eat," Nicky said. He parted from Joe. "I'm starving." Joe hummed agreeably. Nicky went to the phone. "They have room service here?"

"They should," Nile said. It was a nice hotel. Not top of the line, but nice.

Nicky studied the directions printed on the phone. Joe said, "We haven't eaten since yesterday. They were going to starve us to see what happened." He glared at Booker. "She said that – the doctor. Starvation. But not both of us, just one. She said she hadn't decided yet how to structure the experiment." Booker winced and looked at the floor.

"Yeah, I'd like to place an order," Nicky said into the phone, voice calm like Joe wasn't bringing up their torture a few feet from him.

As Nicky talked quietly into the phone, Andy came out of the bathroom. She'd cleaned her face and her hair, somehow, maybe by sticking her head in the shower or under the sink because she was still in the same blood-drenched and spattered clothing, just now with wet shoulders. Otherwise, she seemed unchanged despite how long she'd spent in there.

Booker got to his feet. "I will go next." Joe was between him and the bathroom. Booker took a short step toward him. Joe didn't move, leaving Booker to stop in front of him, eyes downcast. Andy sat on the far bed and stretched out on it carefully. She watched them.

Joe said, "They took pieces out of him, Sebastian! Out of both of us! You heard Merrick." Booker made a tiny nod of his head. He made eye contact briefly. The two shared a look, then Joe stepped out of the way. Booker sidled past him and went in the bathroom. Joe turned to Nicky, who was still on the phone, and said, "Do they have crisps? I would like some."

Nicky finished the order and sat on the bed. Joe joined him, right next to him. Nile took the seat Booker had vacated. She sighed and covered her eyes. "Why do I keep flashing back to the fall out that window, but not the crash or any of the shooting or any of the times I woke up from being dead?"

"I am more upset about what they did to Nicky than to myself," Joe said. "We are all upset. This is normal post-operation. Emotions run high."

Nicky put an arm around him and rocked them both side to side a few times. "They always do. I love you." Joe kissed him, stroked his face tenderly, and then they just sat there, staring off into the distance. After a while, Nicky said to her, "You could not stop the fall. It was out of your control. Everything else, you could influence. But once you started falling, you were powerless. To be powerless to change your situation is the greatest fear of all."

Nile nodded, seeing the parallel with the group's nearly-realized worst-case scenario of confinement. The shower ran in the bathroom, not for very long. Booker emerged stark naked, holding a towel that he was using to dry his hairy forearms with.

Nile blinked and looked around the room. Joe and Nicky were holding hands and leaning against one another, not looking his way. Andy was frowning at the fingernails of one hand. Booker saw Nile in the chair and laid himself out on the other side of the bed from Andy, who still didn't bother to look him. After making a sweep at his head with the towel, he draped it across his hips in what was more likely a gesture for warmth and comfort than it was for modesty.

Nile stood and cleared her throat. "Dibs on the shower." Though seeing Booker's old clothes stuffed into the trash, she hesitated, realizing part of why he was naked. When she was done, she would have nothing but filthy clothes to put back on. Or she could trash them and … wear a towel. She sighed. Well. The military had desensitized her to a lot of things. She stripped and washed.

She wasn't sure how the hotel hair product would work on her hair and there wasn't much of it. Only a tiny bit of it was gone, which was considerate of Booker, but there hadn't been much to start with. She stuck with water. She hadn't had a good shower since Afghanistan and that was a lot of grime to scrub off. She felt better when she was done, clean. The towel only barely covered her, but no one took any more notice of her than they had of Booker. Nicky and Joe took the shower together.

Nile considered the empty bed, but went back to the chair, leaving the bed for Joe and Nicky. Booker was having a quiet conversation with Andy that had switched to English when Nile walked in. Andy said, "I only washed around the outside."

"If he finds sutures," Booker said in a low voice, "will you let me use them?"

"Let's stick with tape."

"You will let me help you?"

Andy was quiet for a moment, then said, "Yes."

Booker nodded. Nile could see him relax from across the room.

"Seems fair," Andy went on. "You're the one who fucked me up to start with."

"True. As far as the others go, it seems to me that it would be better if I said little."

"Good idea."

Booker nodded.

"You can talk to me," Nile said in a normal tone, dispensing with the pretense that she wasn't listening. "I only met you yesterday."

"How did you know?" Booker asked after a moment.

"Know what?"

He said, "How did you know what happened? You showed up to Merrick's tower. Copley didn't ask any questions in the garage earlier. He must have told you. _He_ found you?"

"It wasn't Copley. You were in a cave claiming to be using the internet," Nile said dryly. "I knew something was going on. I just didn't know what until I realized that gun you'd given Andy was empty. That's when it clicked. That's when I knew why they'd left you behind at the safe house when they were abducting you guys _because_ you could heal. It was so they could use you to get Andy."

Andy's head twitched to him. "That grenade …"

"I lied," Booker said. His expression was grave.

"Damn," Andy said. "It was right there in front of me. Nothing else was blown up in the room. TV was still going. But I … couldn't see it. Didn't want to see it."

Nile said sourly, "I've seen grenades go off. They don't … injure that way unless he threw himself on top of it."

Andy nodded. "I assumed he had."

Nile pointed out, "Then how did he get back in the chair?"

Andy shot her an appreciative look for her deduction and shook her head at how she'd missed it herself. She looked to Booker. "Gas for Nicky and Joe, then you used the grenade to cover their tracks." He nodded, lips tight.

Nile tilted her head. "They never came after me, though. The guards in the tower didn't recognize me, didn't expect me. Did they not know about me?"

He shook his head. "I did not tell them about you."

"Why not?"

He could have lied and claimed he'd omitted the information to protect her. More convincingly, he said, "I did not have the opportunity."

Andy said, "He'd already sold us out in the Sudan, before you happened. He was just able to cover it up that time."

"Yes," Booker said quietly.

Andy looked to Nile and asked, "Just so I understand where everyone stands on this, what's up with Copley? Last I saw of him before you said he wanted to help, he was handing me over to Merrick."

Nile sighed. "Yeah. I came on him just after that. He wasn't happy about it. Said it had gotten away from him. Wasn't what he was doing this for. I think he wanted … medical advances, but not kidnapping and torture. I don't know. You'll have to talk to him yourself. I don't want to sound like I'm standing up for him because I don't know him, either. But he brought me to the tower and he was going to come in with me. I told him not to. Cause he'd die."

Andy nodded slowly. "So here we are in a room he put us in, and you're saying you're not sure you can trust him?"

"Wait a minute," Nile said. "You gave me back my phone to call him and _you_ don't trust him?" Though now that she thought about it, there was no reason why Andy _would_ trust him.

"I trusted _you_."

_Oh_. Nile blinked, feeling the enormity of that, coming from Andromache.

Andy asked again, "Can we trust _him_?"

"I hope like hell we can."

There was a knock at the door. Nile looked out silently. It was the food service. She glanced back. She was wrapped in a towel, Booker was the same, and half of Andy's clothes were stuck to her with blood. None of them were fit for public.

Nile spoke to the door, "Just leave it outside." She watched as the man left. He was young, thin, with floppy hair, and reassuringly looked nothing like an ex-military grunt. Behind her, the room was silent other than the sound of Joe and Nicky knocking about in the shower, making the sort of noises one would expect of normal cleaning.

After the hotel staff was entirely gone, Nile opened the door, glanced up and down the hall, and pulled in the cart. It looked like Nicky had ordered one of everything, because there was a lot. She shut the door behind it and found herself salivating as the heady scent of meat and bread and sauces filled the room.

Both Andy and Booker had sat up with hungry expressions. There was just room to push the cart between the beds. Nile sat on one side. Andy got Booker to scoot over and the two of them sat on the other. They hadn't finished lifting off lids to discover what they had, when Joe and Nicky finished the shower.

Nicky stuck his head out of the bathroom, sniffing. "Is that- Is the food here?"

"Yep!" Nile said. Then she averted her gaze as the pair paraded out of the shower. That … was an image that was going to live in her head for a while, even though she hadn't seen much. She screened her eyes with her hand and blew out air. "This is going to take a while to get used to," she muttered.

"Go dry off," Andy admonished. "You're going to drip all over everything!"

Grumbling, they hurried back, used up the last of the towels, and came back with them wrapped around their waists. Joe sat next to her. His hair was still dripping, but Nile didn't complain. Nicky pulled over the chair to sit at the end. They were crowded, but no one cared. Nicky bowed his head. Andy, Booker, and Joe dug in. Nile watched Nicky. When he lifted his head, she asked, "You still pray?"

He nodded, taking a dinner roll and looking around in consternation. "Is there butter or oil?"

Joe handed him a foil butter packet. "I don't see a knife."

"I have a fork," Nicky said, picking one up.

Nile looked at Andy, who was unwrapping a baked potato and ignored the look. She looked back to Nicky. "You believe in God?"

He nodded again, taking a bite. Joe bumped her shoulder with his. "We both believe in God. Just … some of the specifics," he waggled one hand back and forth, "not so much. The idea of good and a higher purpose, that we believe in. We all agree on that."

Nicky nodded again, swallowing and taking over as Joe turned to his food. "I pray because it is important to remember piety and honor. I pray for our good health and our wisdom in facing difficult decisions today and tomorrow."

Joe snorted. Booker lofted his brows with a 'you got a point' tilt of his head. Nile nodded. "I understand that. But do you believe there's a god who hears you?"

"I do not know," Nicky said. " _I_ hear me. That is enough." He hesitated with a steamed carrot on his fork. "My faith is for me, not for others."

She nodded a few times, smiling. "That's interesting."

"Is it?" Joe asked.

"Yes," she said. "I was thinking if God didn't exist, then why be religious, but that's not how you see it."

Nicky shook his head at her. "Whether He exists or not does not matter as much as me having faith that He does. And the exercise itself of prayer and self-reflection, to find God within myself. That is what matters."

She said, "I guess I have a lot to think about, then." She finished off the yogurt parfait that had been in front of her when she'd sat down. It was dessert, but she hadn't wanted to rearrange the dishes. Besides, it was good. "Do we even _need_ to eat? As far as this thing we have goes?"

"Eventually," Andy said, spooning up loaded baked potato.

Joe said, "It gets pretty uncomfortable if you don't."

Nicky said, "You will eventually starve and die. But then you come back. And it cycles. You'll stay alive for a few hours at march or a few days if you can rest. Then you die again."

Nile said, "So, do you stay the same weight as when you became immortal?"

"Yes," Andy said.

"Even if you eat a lot?"

"Yes," Andy repeated.

Joe said to Andy, "Nicky is heavier now than he was when we met. The campaign was hard. He's gained some."

Andy said, "Because he'd starved to death first. If he became heavier, it's because the weight loss he died from is no different than blood from a wound or losing a limb. Once he had food, he returned to his former weight."

Joe looked to him. Nicky shrugged. "I did not starve to death. I was not on that part of the pilgrimage. But it was a long time ago and I didn't take measurements."

Joe said, "I have drawings." A slow smile creased Nicky's face. The look he gave Joe left no illusions as to what those drawings involved.

Nile glanced over Nicky's frame as much as she could without it being inappropriate, given that he was still only wearing a towel. His shoulders were broad, but that was his bone structure. His face was hollowed and he certainly wasn't carrying any extra weight, but he was a very long way from someone who'd died of starvation. She looked to Andy. "Have you ever seen anyone before and after they became immortal?"

"No," Andy said with a bit of annoyance. "How would I? I don't know until after it's happened."

Nile shook her head. "No big deal." But mentally, she decided she trusted Joe's assessment of Nicky's body (and Nicky's of his own history) more than she did Andy's. Despite Andy's age and experience, Joe and Nicky were the only ones who had seen a before and after, assuming they had, which she wasn't entirely sure of. She started on a bowl of chili and went back to what she thought was a neutral subject. "What about an immortal who can't get food? Ever? Do they just waste away?"

Andy, Joe, and Nicky all stopped eating. A beat later, so did Booker. They all looked at Nile. Nile said, "Is that not a question I should ask?"

Andy said, "If you're dreaming of Quynh, then they don't waste away." Her voice was hard. For the next few minutes, the only sound around the table was that of eating.

"Can I ask another question?" Nile asked finally.

"The only way you'll learn," Joe said.

"This stuff is great, but can we get food poisoning?"

"Yes." All four of them said it, followed by snickers from all of them but Nicky.

Nicky reddened. "I did not know how old the porridge was!"

Joe told Nile, "My habibi is a wonderful cook."

Nicky said, "I thought Booker had spiced it strangely. He'd been into it earlier."

"Yes," Booker said, "and it tasted funny so I didn't-" He cut himself off. Nicky and Joe's looks weren't openly hostile, but they weren't welcoming. He went back to eating.

"What about the common cold?" Nile asked quickly, wanting to distract from that.

"No," Nicky said.

Joe said to Andy, "You had that thing where your skin came off."

" _Part_ of my skin," she said. "I think it was leprosy." To Nile, she said, "I've never had anything I couldn't shrug off in a day. Even the food poisoning was just a bad afternoon for all of us."

"I ate it, too," Nicky said in his defense.

"We know, dearest," Joe said, patting his forearm and chuckling.

"So we _can_ be poisoned," Nile asked.

Nicky said, "We were gassed yesterday."

Joe nodded. "Then whatever that doctor injected us with."

Nicky said to him, "You were unconscious for a long time from that. I don't know what that was."

"We don't always recover the same from person to person?" Nile asked.

Joe shook his head. "We don't always recover the same from day to day. Most of the time fast," he made that waffling gesture again with his hand, "but not always. Sometimes slow."

Nicky said, "Booker has a theory about bacteria and germs." He nodded in Booker's direction as though inviting him to elaborate.

"Booker had a lot of theories," Joe said quickly and bitterly, as though Booker weren't sitting right there with them. Booker took the hint and said nothing.

Nile sighed and smiled nervously. "Well, what's the process for settling things with this Booker guy?"

Andy said, "We discuss it. Later, without Booker."

"After we're dressed," Joe said.

"After we rest." Nicky pushed back from the cart, finished. "When our heads are clear and our hearts are ready."

"This evening or tomorrow," Andy said. "Not long. The sooner the better."

Nile nodded. "That's good to hear. I don't like the eggshells."

There was a knock at the door. Nicky held his towel in place and went to look. He glanced back at the rest of them with what Nile took as a neutral face. The others seem to gain some meaning from it, for they relaxed. Nicky opened the door and stepped aside. Copley entered with two large duffel bags. He dropped them on the nearer bed, next to the assault rifle.

Copley said, "I found everything you asked for and picked up a few other things. Women's clothes in this one with first aid stuff at the end. Men's in this one with toiletries."

"Fantastic," Nile said, beaming at him as she adjusted the towel that had slipped down at some point while eating and no one had commented. Owning it seemed like the best course. "We're a little short on clothes at the moment."

"Yes, I see that," Copley said tensely, as much a product of the modern, rather prudish age, as she was. "Well, I'll be going. You have my number. I would like to talk later if you … will?"

"We'll be in touch," Andy said.

Copley let himself out. Nile opened the nearest duffel, finding two reasonably neat stacks of clothes with shoes tucked under them. She pulled one out and took it to the bathroom to get dressed. When she came out, the guys were half-dressed and discussing the sizes of jeans and belt lengths, sorting out what fit who the best. Nile turned to Andromache, who was idly fiddling with the dirty shirt she still wore.

Nile told her, "I just now figured out what's up with you. Let me help." She reached for the hem of the shirt. Andy sighed and let her pull it up and over her head. Andy made no sound, but she'd held her breath for it. "Starting to stiffen up, aren't you?" Nile asked.

Andy nodded. "It's a new thing." She sounded wryly pleased about it. "Feels like I've never felt like this before."

"Maybe you haven't," Nile said. "No one shot you in the side however-many-thousand years ago when you last suffered longer than a handful of seconds from an injury." She turned to the duffel bag and pulled out the medical stuff, laying it out on the bed Andy was sitting on and reviewing what they had.

"You know medicine?" Andy asked.

Nile shook her head. "The Marine Corps teaches us first aid, field treatment, and the basics of how to set up a scene for a medivac." She laid out bandages, dispensed antibiotics and painkillers, and set aside the stuff Andy didn't need. "I'll get you some water."

When Nile returned, Booker was standing where she'd been and was looking the stuff over. His expression was uncertain. Nile handed the water to Andy. "For the pills." She took them. Nile looked to Booker. "What medicine do you know?"

"None."

"What?" she said, aghast.

"We don't need it," Booker said. "I know how to cut out bullets, but anyone knows how to do that. It was just what I ended up doing. I attended surgical theatre some years ago. I suppose that counts as classes on dissection and anatomical study."

"'Some years ago'?" Nile said in disbelief. "They don't even have surgical theatres anymore. They haven't had them in, like, a hundred years or more."

Andy said, "Nicky and Joe didn't want to cut each other. Booker took over from me after he joined."

"That was after that splinter behind my eye," Nicky said.

Joe said in a pained voice, "No. Don't talk about that. That was the end. I would never again after that."

"Yeah, okay," Nile said, gesturing at Andy. "I'll do this." She told Booker, "You go … cut on them."

"Oh, merci," he said quietly, turning to face the two.

Andy's stitches were ripped, as expected. Nile cleaned the wound, removed the stitches, replaced them with tape, and loosely bandaged it to keep it clean. "I'm not going to bother telling you that you should take it easy, avoid physical activity, and give this a few days to heal. But unless you let it heal, it's going to take _weeks_ before this closes up _and_ you could die from it."

"Weeks?"

"Weeks."

Andy made a displeased groan. "Will it feel like this the whole time?"

"Most of it," Nile told her. "At first. I've never been shot in the side … never even been shot until you shot me, so what do I know? But for regular people, gunshot wounds take weeks to heal and the biggest danger right now is secondary infection. You need to keep the wound site clean. And … I'll have to do some research to figure out what else we need to do."

Behind her, Joe let out a stream of what she suspected was expletive-laden Arabic, though the words came out too quickly for her to follow them. (Curse words were one of the few things she knew in several languages but even so, he'd spoken too fast and he had a strange accent compared to what she knew.) Nicky made a slight hissing noise and a groan, followed by a quiet, "It's okay."

Booker said, "It's _under_ the shoulder blade. There's no way I can get to it without cutting more and lifting it so I can see what I'm doing."

Nicky said something else, this time in Italian. Joe gave him a rueful smile. To Booker, Joe said, "Are you sure it's there?"

"The forceps are touching metal," Booker said, "but I keep gripping muscle."

Nicky said something simple enough that even Nile understood it, but then he repeated himself in English anyway. "Yes, it is there." To Booker, he said, "Do it."

Nile said, "Do it in the bathtub, not on the bed you're going to be sleeping in later." She could already see bloodspots on the cover, but if Booker was going to do what she thought he was going to do, then there was going to be more than a few spots. They moved the surgery to the bathroom, with Joe hovering in the doorway.

Nile scrubbed at her face. "This is my new reality." She shook her head and pushed the food cart out to the hall so it wasn't in the way, then cleared the bed. That short time was apparently enough, as Joe was showing Andy the bullet. Nile flopped down on the mattress. Joe showed it to her next. "See? It was right where Nicky thought it was. He said it came in through the chest early on, but didn't pass through."

The misshapen lump of metal wasn't a proper mushroom like she'd seen from demonstration rounds shot through water. "This was a hollow point. It must have hit bone, though, or it would look better than this. Are you sure this was all of it?"

"I am sure," Booker said grimly, drying his hands as he came out of the bathroom. Nicky followed him, pulling his shirt back on.

Still lying on the bed, she handed the bullet back to Joe. She was suddenly very tired. Poor sleep for the last two days, near-constant exertion, dying repeatedly, good food, and now, relaxation. She breathed out heavily and wondered when the cot was going to arrive. She wasn't even sure what time it was – evening, it seemed like. She thought about looking for the clock, but sleep took her before she could bother.

She was falling … but below her was only the ocean, and below that Quynh in the deeps, waiting for her, watching her. When she hit, she knew, Quynh would get her somehow. She could barely breathe. Quynh knocked at the inside of the coffin. It sounded strange, like it was real somehow.

There was motion next to her on the bed. That was definitely real. She sat up with a start, her heart pounding. Next to her was Joe and beyond him Nicky, somewhat wild-eyed and lifting the assault rifle, turning it in his hands to get a proper grip on it. There was another polite knock at the hotel room door.

Nile blew out air. "It's just the cot." She got out of bed as Joe was getting his bearings and Nicky was laying the rifle over Joe's hip, pointing it at the door. She looked out the peephole. It was the same skinny, pimple-faced dude as before, with the cot as she'd expected. She looked back to Nicky and said, "It's the cot." He nodded and slid the gun to the side, concealing it behind Joe's legs. Beyond him, Booker was awake but just watching. Andy was dressed in her bloody shirt again and looked dead to the world. Or dead.

Nile wrestled in the cot with no help from the staff, leaning it up in a corner and piling the towels on the tiny table that was next to where the chair had been when they'd first entered the room. That done, door relocked, she looked over at Booker. "Is she alive?"

"Hm?" He turned his head in Andy's direction, then back to Nile. "Yes?"

Nile waited a beat, staring, until she was sure Andromache was breathing. She laid down on the bed again. She stared at the ceiling, thinking about the dream and wondering if she'd ever have unbroken sleep again.

Joe and Nicky rearranged themselves. A moment later, Joe's hand reached back and touched her hip lightly, followed by an irregular patting. She smiled and caught his hand. He gave it a squeeze before letting go and returning to his previous position spooning Nicky. Her smile broadened.

They were thinking about her. She was one of them now, part of the family. Booker had been right that they only needed two beds, but no one had stopped her from adding the unnecessary cot. She scooted over an inch or two, just enough so her shoulder touched Joe's back. She could feel his easy breathing. In a minute, hers was matching his. Then she was asleep again.

If she dreamed this time, she didn't remember it. When she woke, she was rested. It felt like hours had passed. Next to her, Joe and Nicky were murmuring to each other in some language she didn't know. Maybe Italian. They sounded calm. She rubbed at her eyes and sat up, going over to the dresser to evaluate the extra stuff Copley had brought.

There was a toothbrush for each of them – Joe's and Nicky's were already in the bathroom. There was also hair oil and a tail comb – an advantage of sending someone like Copley for supplies rather than someone white, she supposed. She took her stuff into the bathroom. Her braids were frazzled more than a little oil was going to fix. She'd been thrown out of a car, into a car, had fist fights, gun battles, explosions, defenestration, and multiple head injuries. It wasn't neat and tidy anymore.

When she left the bathroom, everyone was up and stirring. Even Andy was awake, though doing no more than a few subtle stretches where she still laid on the bed. Nile asked, "Is our hair immortal, too? Does it keep growing forever, or does it stop at the length it is now?"

Booker said, "It grows." He waved at his scruffy beard. "We have to shave. Speaking of which …" He passed her and went into the bathroom.

Andy mused, "I had hair so long once that it was more than twice my height." Her voice turned nostalgic. Joe and Nicky stopped what they were doing to listen, like this was something they'd never heard from her before. She went on, "It hung over the back of the throne and was suspended from loops in the … um, rafters? Of the … I don't think there's a word in English for it. Yurt, maybe, but that's not right. It was bigger. Like a longhouse."

Andy looked puzzled for a moment. "I think they stopped building those after the … uh, world-trees? Great-trees? Something, disappeared. I haven't seen one in a few thousand years – the trees or the buildings." She shrugged it off. "Anyway, I cut it all off one day. I've kept it short since then. But you will need to cut your hair, unless something happens to it."

"Great-trees?" Nile asked.

Andy shrugged again. "I don't know the word in English for them either. There probably isn't one. They weren't redwoods, but they were tall and straight and they used them to make the, uh," she paused, "well, the buildings." Nile blinked, wondering when she'd get used to casual prehistoric facts dropped into conversation as idly as talking about what the old neighborhood looked like before that big shopping mall moved in.

Joe said to Nicky, "I think the last time your hair was long was when we were in Greece."

"When we lived there?" Joe nodded. Nicky said, "I didn't like it that long. It was the fashion, though." He turned to Nile and gestured at Joe, "He went a long time, a few centuries, with a great mound of hair. I used to style it for him. It was impressive."

"Then it caught fire that day," Joe said with a laugh. "What was that, 1857?"

"Caught fire?" Andy said. "You ran into a burning building."

Joe shrugged. "I wasn't thinking about my hair."

They all had a laugh. Nile dragged the chair out of the way and sat in it to start working on her hair. Nicky came over and said, "I will help you."

"You …? Okay." She let him take the comb from her and he began deftly unraveling her braids. Joe ordered breakfast from room service, then took his turn in the bathroom. Booker examined one of the pill bottles. Nile said, "She should take three or four more of those, but probably wait until the food shows up. She also needs to take another antibiotic. And check the wound for infection."

He nodded and went to Andy's side. She'd sat up by now, finally. Andy said, "You weren't kidding about being stiff the next day. Makes me wonder how normal people manage."

Nile laughed. Booker knelt on the floor and checked Andy's dressing. He said something quiet to her. Andy said something in reply and laughed, then held her side. The laugh changed, but didn't stop. Booker grinned at her and said something further in French. Andy braced herself against the bed with one hand, the other holding her side as she continued to have pained chuckles. "Oui," she said to him. "Ça serait une tellement bonne façon de mourir, cela dit."

"Tu ferais un cadavre vraiment malodorant," Booker said. She shoved him on the shoulder.

Nicky made an amused, pleased sound as he unraveled braids. When the laughter seemed to be ebbing, Nile asked, "How does it look?"

Booker stood. "Very messy, but not infected."

Joe came out of the bathroom and stopped at the foot of Andy's bed. He looked around at everyone else's smiles and grinned himself. "It is good?"

"It is good," Nicky said quietly.

"Okay, okay," Andy said. "I'll go." Booker edged past her to the opposite side, wedging himself into the small space next to the head of the bed. It didn't make much sense to Nile until she realized he was avoiding walking out next to Joe. Instead, Andy got to her feet (swatting away Booker's attempt to help her and telling him something else in French that Nile didn't catch) and hobbled into the bathroom.

Joe moved to the bed he'd shared with Nicky and Nile. He propped up the pillows at the head of it so he could recline comfortably. He picked up the remote control for the TV and clicked it on, leaving it mute as he navigated to the schedule of shows.

Able to move freely now, Booker shuffled through the medical supplies again, getting a fresh bandage for when Andy returned. He counted out the pills and consulted with Nile to make sure they were right, since she couldn't remember the names that were on the bottles. He told her, "She needs to be looked at again when she is clean. I can't tell, but I think it is okay."

"Was she fevered?" Nile asked. Booker shook his head. Nile said, "Good." Booker moved on to gather up clean clothes for Andy and handed them into the bathroom.

Joe clicked on a few news programs, looking for mention of the assault on Merrick, but there was no word of it in the little coverage they were able to view before breakfast arrived. They had five omelets with a pair of savory scones and a few slices of fruit each. Each plate was the exact same, in counterpoint to the medley they'd ended up with for dinner. Nile wondered if that was a Nicky/Joe difference or something else. She figured she'd find out eventually and didn't bother to ask.

Nicky had just finished letting down her hair and given her a brief, but much-appreciated scalp massage when the food showed up. He and Joe used Arabic to discuss hairstyles to put it up in. When they seemed to have settled on something (and Andy had joined them, dressed in the clean clothes), Nile asked, "How many languages do you guys know?"

"A lot," Joe said. Nicky nodded.

"I think I know seventeen?" Booker said uncertainly. "I would have to count."

"It would be easier to count the ones I don't know," Andy said. "There are some American ones I never learned and Polynesian – they get very localized on the islands and I lose the meaning. It's been a long time since I ran into someone I couldn't make conversation with."

Nile nodded. That was intimidating. "Okay."

Nicky said, "How many do you know?"

"I'm American," she said, feeling insufficient. "Or United States, I guess I should say." Given that she expected Andy's use of 'American' had meant North, South, and Central.

"What does that mean?" Nicky asked.

"I know one," Nile said. "And a little bit of Pashto. A few words of other stuff. But like earlier, what they were laughing about? All I got out of that was 'cadaver'."

Booker said, "I was telling her that if she died because she was laughing, she would leave a very smelly corpse."

"The language will come," Nicky said confidently.

"I hope so. Sooner the better for me." Nile took a drink of her coffee. "This is the best hotel coffee I have ever had."

"It's not the coffee," Booker said.

Nile looked at her cup. She'd put cream and sugar in it, but they'd been out of the little packets on the tray. "What do you mean?"

He glanced at the others, then told her, "Your body is different now. Drugs, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine – all of that and more. You will feel the rush at first, but it fades quickly. There is no withdrawal. No craving for it later, no headache, no shakes. But you will remember how sweet it was. And it will be that sweet every time you reach for it. In a way, it is even more addictive, but the dissipation is all voluntary." There was a bitterness to his voice.

She looked at the coffee, thinking about Andy drinking vodka like it was water and with no more apparent effect other than helping her knock off for a few z's on the flight. There were implications to this. "Oh."

"Many things," Nicky said quietly, "remain as good as they were the first time, over the years."

Joe stifled a laugh. "No, no, habibi. I cannot let you say that. The passage of time and _so much_ practice makes some things _even better_."

"I'm trying to eat here, guys," Nile said.

Joe chortled. He and Nicky exchanged warm, pleased looks with one another.

Andy said, "As far as skills go, muscle memory stays. It seems to stick better for us than it does for most people. It's easy to learn things, but you do eventually forget them. At your age, that's going to be a while. I wouldn't worry about it. In any case, what you forget are the things you don't need or never think about. After a while, everything has a … familiar sort of feel to it."

"How long is a while?" Nile asked.

Andy shrugged. Booker said, "Older than I am."

Nicky said, "Hundreds of years. Some things … some things I think I know what she is talking about. They blend together. Rome, for example."

Joe nodded and said something in Italian about a villa and switched mid-sentence to English with, "and we spent three weeks looking for it because we were so certain it was there!"

"It _had_ been there," Nicky said, "two hundred years before. I felt insane when it wasn't there and no one knew what I was talking about."

"And I drew it," Joe said. "We kept showing the pictures to people." He laughed it off.

Nicky said, "No need to worry about it. Are you done eating?" Nile nodded. Nicky said, "Then I will finish with your hair. Something a little looser, that pulls differently on the scalp and will come out easily if you don't like it." They moved to the chair.

"I am not complaining," Nile said, "no matter what it looks like." Joe cleaned up.

Booker presented Andy with her pills, which she swallowed down with the last of her coffee. He asked, "Can I see the wound now that it is clean?"

"It's fine. I know what infection looks like."

"But can I see it?"

"I said it was fine."

Joe moved the cart out of the way and said, "Please Andy. We all love you. Even him. We're very worried."

She let out a long-suffering sigh and jerked up the hem of her shirt. Nile tried to crane her neck to see, but the angle was bad and Booker's head was in the way.

"I will put a bandage on it," Booker said, straightening and moving to the dresser where he'd put the supplies. Joe was next to it, with the breakfast cart on one side of him and now Booker on the other. It was the closest they'd been that Joe wasn't confronting him.

"No," Andy said.

Booker looked from Andy to Joe. Joe was studying Andy. Booker told her, "You have to have one."

"I don't ' _have_ ' to have anything."

Nile said, "You don't have to have it, but you can die if it's not treated right and then that's on us."

Andy said firmly. "You're not putting a bandage on me."

Booker took a step closer to her, giving her a beseeching look. "You said you would let me help."

"Give it to me," Andy said.

He extended the bandage to her. "You said you would let me help," he repeated.

She took a deep breath, let it out, and said, "Then hold up my shirt. It's in my way."

He held it clear while she used both hands to position the bandage. He said, "I _know_ I did this to you. That is why I want to help."

"You want to make it right," she said. He nodded, letting the shirt drop. "Well, deciding how we do that is the next order of business."

"No, there is one last thing to address before that," Booker said. He cleared his throat. "Nile, do you have any entrained objects in your body?"

"Do I have any what?" She reached up to touch her hair. Nicky was finished with it. It felt like a modified crown braid.

"Bullets. Shrapnel."

"How would I tell?"

"They would itch. Hurt. Twinge. When you stretch muscle over that part, it will pull."

Nicky said, "I went blind in one eye once. Joe could not find it. Andromache had to cut it out. This whole part." He smiled and gestured at his eye and the side of his head. He was obviously looking for Joe's reaction. Joe made a disgusted noise.

Nile made a disturbed face and rolled her eyes. "No, I can see. Everything feels fine. But it's not going to kill me anyway, right? So we don't have to do exploratory surgery right now. I'll figure something out later. Like with an x-ray machine or something. If I need to. Thanks."

"He's very good," Nicky said.

"I'm sure," Nile said, partly sarcastically.

Booker turned to Andy. "Very well. That was my only objection."

Andy nodded. "Let's pack up and take a walk. I don't think anyone's seriously put their mind to the problem. Let's do that, then get a drink and talk it over."

"I know a pub," Nicky said.

"If it's still there," Joe said back.

"If it's not," Booker said, "you can draw a picture of it." They laughed.

They gathered their things, put all the stuff they were keeping in one duffel and all the blood-stained clothes and washcloths in another (yes, they were stealing some of the linens; Nile suspected it was better to be billed for lost towels than risk explaining why there was so much blood). They dropped off the bag they were keeping at the car and tossed the other in a dumpster when they were well away from the hotel.

Andy slipped her the phone as they left the car. "Keep it." Nile nodded and fell back from the rest, calling Copley and discussing how to handle her family.

The others kept up a commentary on the changes in the city since the last time they'd been this way. They stopped at the entrance to the bar to read the sign about it being a historical site. Nicky, Joe, and Andy smiled fondly, or maybe ruefully at it. Booker shook his head and went inside alone. When the rest entered, he was taking his drink outside to the balcony that overlooked the river. The others took a table inside. Nile took a seat with them.

Nicky said to Andy, "Tell us what happened."

"We were supposed to be captured in the Sudan. It didn't happen. I don't know why. Maybe they didn't believe we could heal. You were there for it – they shot and stopped, like they didn't expect us to get up. But after that they had video. And after _that_ , Booker wanted us to go directly to Copley. I think for capture."

Joe nodded. Nicky listened. Andy went on, "But Nile happened and I left to get her. Booker told them where the safe house was. You were gassed and captured. He blew himself up with a grenade so that I'd be fooled. I was. He gave me Copley's address. It was another setup. The three of us went there, but Nile changed her mind. She wanted to go see her family. She separated. I handed her the gun Booker had given me. She said she noticed later it was empty.

"Once Booker and I were inside, he shot me in the back. I wasn't healing. Merrick's men came in. They'd been waiting. They took us both. You know the rest." She looked to Nile as though expecting a continuation.

"Um," Nile said, "I don't have a lot to add, except that, um, I mean, he said he was using the internet from inside a cave from the, I don't know, 1050s or something. I knew something was wrong, but nothing was making sense to me right then. It didn't start making sense until I saw the gun was empty. Then I came back to Copley's house and found him just picking himself up off the floor from a head injury.

"He'd had a change of heart about selling you guys to Merrick. He showed me a board of information he'd collected on all of you, on all the good you'd been doing over the years and how sometimes it didn't bear fruit until a generation or two later. He said he thought research on you would end disease and that he didn't expect it to be … the way it was playing out. He took me to Merrick's tower and got me inside. He wanted to come with me, but I wouldn't let him. So that was all."

There was quiet around the table. Joe said, "Booker has been dreaming Quynh since the beginning. He told us it stopped. He lied." He leaned forward toward Andy. "You went two hundred years thinking she was dead, because _he lied_. And now Nile comes along and you know she's alive. Still alive. Still out there."

When Andy didn't say anything, Nile said, "I had another dream of her last night. Is this going to be a thing every single night? Because if it is, I kind of understand why Booker might want to end it."

"It's not every night," Nicky said quietly. "We thought his grief was over his family. It may have been, but it was also over ours. He has carried this burden, silently and privately."

"He had no right to," Joe snapped. "He should have _told_ us. He _lied_."

"He still carried it," Nicky said. "To shield us. Perhaps to shield Andy."

"Is this the bigger sin?" Nile asked. "Lying about the dreams? Bigger than setting you guys up to be tortured by that psycho?"

Joe said passionately, "If Nicky were suffering and someone I trusted _lied to me_ about it for two hundred years, thinking it would be easier for me to sleep at night not knowing, then yes, that is the bigger sin! He _also_ at fault for the other."

Nicky said, "The one led to the other. He is a good man."

"That is debatable," Joe said. "He is the same man he has always been. The dreams are still there and he is still lying."

Andy said, "I don't think he's lying about anything now."

Nicky said, "I think he is telling the truth and that he regrets what he did."

Joe gave Nicky a sideways look. "I am very, very pissed off." Andy smiled slightly. Joe said, "I can't trust him. Can you?" He was looking at Nicky, his eyes turning softer in the process. Nicky gave an ambivalent expression. Joe said, "If you cannot say yes, then that is a no."

"It's a no," Nicky said.

Nile asked, "So what's the process? You have him locked up and tortured in revenge? How do you get unpissed off?"

Nicky said, "He has to regain trust. He has broken faith with us and with himself."

Joe said, "If he wanted to end his life so much, why did he not present himself to these torturers instead of giving us to them? It is vicious, what he did!"

"It may have just gotten away from him," Nile said.

Andy shook her head. "Don't make excuses for him. He made a choice. That thing in Sudan … he made sure we were all in on it. He wanted the whole team to go. He wasn't going to do it alone."

"It is vicious," Joe repeated.

"I think of his voice when he said he'd killed Andromache," Nicky said. "He did not want what happened."

Joe shook his head and grimaced. "I heard his voice as well. But what was done to us, to you, nearly to Andy and even to him, himself, is too great. I need more than regret to be 'unpissed off'."

"Would an apology help?" Nile asked. "I notice he hasn't given one."

"It would not help," Nicky said. "Not yet."

Joe bared his teeth briefly. "At this point, it would be an insult!"

Andy said, "He gave me one at Copley's. I believe it was sincere. But like you, Joe, I didn't care much. He knows he has to make this right. That has to come first."

Nile sighed. "I don't know what else you want out of him, unless you want to beat him up somehow."

"I do _not_ ," Joe said emphatically.

"Good," Nile said. "Because I don't want to join a group that treats people that way when they make mistakes."

Andy said, "But you also don't want to be in a group that let mistakes like this – intentional ones – go without punishment. We have to stand up for each other. And Book has to know that. For his own self-respect, he has to know _he_ has paid his debt. Not that it was forgiven for him."

Nile nodded. "I just don't know what to suggest, then. Bring him in here? Ask him?"

Andy shook her head. "This is our decision, our judgment that he has to live with. That _we_ have to live with."

"It is a difficult decision," Nicky said. "The penalty that would matter most to him is the thing that would keep us safe: ostracization. He does not want to be alone. We do not want to be with him."

"Kick him out? Forever?" Nile asked. "You're the only family he has."

"Not forever," Nicky said. "But he has to pay a price that matters to him, that is difficult but possible. Penance requires sacrifice. He is two hundred years old. Ten percent of his life. Twenty years, maybe."

"One hundred," Joe said. "It is not _his_ timetable that matters. He did this to you and to me and to Andromache. Ten percent of his life is not the same as ten percent of ours. Will we be able to trust him in twenty years? Is that long enough for you to forget that he betrayed you? It is not long enough for _me_." He made a sharp, dismissive wave of his hand.

Nicky shrugged, making it clear he wasn't going to argue for the number he'd offered. Nile stood. "Well, my tenure is barely counted in days right now. You decide what you're good with. I'm going to get some air."

"Nile," Andy said. She stopped. Andy went on, "You _do_ have a say in this."

"And I've said it," Nile said. "But you're right. You're the ones who need to be at peace with this. Whatever you decide, I'll back it." She paused before adding, "I trust you." She walked outside to lean against the balustrade with Booker.

"How's it going?" he asked blandly.

"They're still deciding."

"There's not much to decide. It's not like they can kill me."

She gave him a sideways look. He was not going to like what they decided. But as the others were pointing out, that was part of the deal. It _had_ to be difficult. It _had_ to be a sacrifice. If she'd become a Marine without effort, then it wouldn't have meant anything to her. And that she _had_ paid for it made it all the more valuable. Just as she was paying a price to join the group.

She pulled out her phone. Booker said, "Oh, she gave it back?"

"Yeah." She fidgeted with it, still struggling with the price the group required on this one. "I talked to Copley. Said he could fix it. Make it look like I was killed in action. My family will mourn, but, uh … they'll be able to move on. It's just like what we did with my dad. I just really want to hear my mom's voice one more time."

"You're a good kid, Nile. You're gonna be great for the team."

"Things that are worth it are never easy," she said, looking out at the river.

"Sometimes it feels like nothing is ever easy." He patted her shoulder. "I'm going down to the water. Tell them where I am when they're done, will you?"

"I will."

**Author's Note:**

> I am aware leprosy does not effect a person very quickly. Andy is in error on her diagnosis. Actually, although Andy (and the others) know a great deal, none of them are perfectly reliable and entirely accurate reporters.
> 
> I have a lot to say in the comments, for those who like to read the author's thoughts on things.


End file.
